I've been working on that for a client since yesterday (as a fractional CTO). Pretty hectic, basically nothing really works and we don't know yet if all data is lost or if anything is recoverable or when AWS UAE will become functional again so we can recover that region.
Finally, I have a very good argument for multi-region deployments ;))
To a lot of managers/startup execs this is something like "we won't ever need this". And I'd agree to some extent for not so important/rebuildable services. Depends on what you need. In startups, you don't have infinite time you can spend on stuff. But this makes a good case: if a geographical region only has one AWS region, don't keep data or run services that can't be easily rebuild somewhere else.
In europe you can just pick two AWS regions and you stay in the same regions, UAE not so much.
That was my point: now we have a very specific case we can argue. I always used the "what if a plane crashes into the data center" argument. Now I can say: in one of my engagements, we lost a datacenter completely because of a drone attack. That's a first for AWS as well, but we can draw from reality, not hypotheticals.
We didn't do multi-region deployments, but we did store database backups in a separate region just in case something really bad happened and our AWS region became unavailable. Also had a plan/some ready Terraform stuff in order to start setting up a deployment if it became apparent that the region wasn't coming back anytime soon.
IMO, if you're using AWS and not replicating your data somewhere else, this should be an eye-opener for you.
Not sure why everyone read this as me doing anything here, I'm a fractional CTO, which is kind of an advisor. Nothing invaluable will be lost tho. It's not the core platform, just a localized version for specific customers in the region.
Of course, no worries. Nothing irreplaceable will be lost ;) It was meant as a general example to be used in future arguments for everybody in tech leadership.
Hmmm. We’ve seen the fun that comes from cutting data cables and pipelines. Think that’s been factored in with the asymmetric warfare coming from the Middle East? Perhaps some network assaults as well?
Krugman has pointed out that modern war is bloody expensive. Perhaps resistance will just be helping burn money? Lots of motivated people on one side. And I hope countries are being careful, as a Thirty Years War in the Middle East would suck.
Lesson learned: If your recovery plan requires calling any API in the dead region — to detach an IP, describe a route table, launch an instance, read an S3 object, or decrypt a volume — it will fail when you need it most.
Every dependency on the primary region is a dependency on the thing that just broke.
In the eighties my friends and I used to think we would be the first to go in a nuclear strike because we were close to an American air base. Now I have to worry about living close to an Amazon data centre.
> Two facilities in the United Arab Emirates sustained direct hits, while a third facility in Bahrain was damaged by a drone strike "in close proximity,"
Also to add context: AWS has contracts with the US military: "The Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract enables AWS to continue providing Department of Defense (DoD) customers with secure, reliable, and mission-critical cloud services." https://aws.amazon.com/federal/defense/jwcc/ Making them a target for retaliation ofc.
Amazon is an extremely visible American company, hitting their assets carries a symbolic meaning even if the DoD wouldn't have anything running on that datacentre at all. Iran's trying to transmit a message of "we can destroy your stuff too", trying to impact the general US feeling of invulnerability.
I don't think it'll work, but they might as well try I guess.
> I don't think it'll work, but they might as well try I guess.
Consider this from the eyes of the people living there. Your world is peaceful one day and burning tomorrow. It doesn't have to be "burning like hell", but something came from the sky, entered your building, exploded and damaged some stuff to the extent that fire-supression triggered and damaged more things.
Even if it's not a trauma, it's a shock. Something you'll be remembering for a long time. We live in fragile bubbles, but don't know it until we experience it pop. While this might not make them "win" the war, it'll leave a mark and make the affected persons' ears perch up to understand what's happening better.
Please note, I'm not from either side. I'm a close observer because of where I live, and still believe that this should have not happened.
That's why they've been hitting residential buildings and hotels as well? They assume that because their proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah) hide in civilian structures, so does the US army?
All these attempts to justify Iranian terror demonstrate just how deep Qatari influence online has been. And even Qatar is being attacked by Iran now.
Is Hezbollah hiding in the elementary school that got bombed? Perhaps that’s where the Iranian nuclear research was done?
We attacked them. Full stop. And as far as I can tell we haven’t given them any conditions for when we will stop bombing them. In what moral framework do you have to just accept another sovereign, a vastly more powerful one, invading your country without fighting back?
I can't guess what the USA wants other than a distraction from the raping-of- children saga, but I bet Israel would settle for "we acknowledge your right to exist and won't fund or encourage organisations that plan to harm you."
Negotiations during which the Iranians continuously stalled and continued their nuclear work. The threat of attack was part of the US negotiation strategy, and the Iranians thought they would call the "bluff". They were wrong.
> They assume that because their proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah) hide in civilian structures, so does the US army?
> Two US Defense Department employees were wounded when an Iranian drone struck a hotel in Bahrain's capital Manama, The Washington Post reported Monday.
I genuinetely do not think Hasbara like this works anymore. The overton window on this has irrevocably shifted since 2023 and it would be a better strategy for you to live within this new reality, rather than making ludicrous claims that the middle eastern country most vehemently trying to shape western views on the region is... Qatar. It just comes across as an obvious projection, and only encourages sentiment that has a real potential to become harmful to you personally.
That is, unless posts like thos are designed to encourage that sentiment, which I sometimes suspect.
I think this shifted overtone window has partially to do with why they started this war to begin with, they see the writing on the wall and their window of opportunity is closing. Trump is at historic lows in polling [1]; 65% of democrats now sympathize more with Palestinians over Israelis (17%) [2]. HN is just a generally reactionary place, I wouldn't read to much into that.
The more telling figure is that 50% of *republicans* under 50 do not support Israel. Even Charlie Kirk was posting about how awful an idea an Iran war was before he was killed in mysterious circumstances.
The Epstein files with their derogatory and supremacist remarks made about "goyim" have not helped. Neither has the PR dwmage control to either ignore that or claim he was working for Russia or Qatar.
At the end of the day you have to understand the reality that Iran is a sovereign nation that is going to defend itself. And yes they are hitting residential buildings and hotels with US military personnel present. None of this is terrorism, this is a nation state retaliating after an attack on their nation, you have to understand this basic concept, actions have consequences.
This is not propaganda, you are just willfully ignorant. If you want to destroy Iran you have to take retaliation into account, everything else is just propaganda, what do you expect them to do instead? Just lie down and take it?
You can't use retaliation of the nation you attacked as justification of why the attack was justified, its circular logic, this is textbook propaganda you are repeating.
I mean if you want to put your geopolitical blinkers on, sure...but how to beat America is old news at this point: cause casualties however you can, and wait for the US to give up.
Complain about it all you want but what are you going to do? The US is already bombing them.
Perhaps all of this goes into the big bucket labelled "war is expensive and unpredictable, maybe try diplomacy?"
Which the current administration has made a note of promptly tearing up prior agreements with everyone anyway so...whoops I guess.
Defend themselves? LOL...
Keep dreaming. Maybe they are continuing being delusional they can threaten a superpower without repercussions... I suggest getting a shrink working on that...
They can make it very expensive though. And they can't negotiate, given it's the second time they are attacked during negotiations, so really, what can they do? Cause the most chaos possible around them, strain the relationships between the US and other ME countries, force the US to make a choice about which ally to protect (it will be Saudi Arabia), make the oil price go up and deplete US weapon stocks. If the force the US and Israel to put boots on the ground, they will have won.
In WW-II, the US bombed the hell out of German forces for months on end. That is what people do not understand. The US have the capability to generate bombs indefinitely. There will be no boots on the ground for soldiers (they wish). They will just get pulverised as time goes by. If the US and Israel will think they cannot get to their thick skull they'll simply bomb the oil refineries and let the Iranian regime deal with paychecks from their street goons and fanatics who will eat them alive.
> The US have the capability to generate bombs indefinitely.
The same US which had to re-build and re-open factories to be able to support Ukraine, and had an important shortage of shells for some time?
The same US talking with their allies to build ships for them?
US generals said that their defensive munition is not infinite. Middle Eastern countries said that they have Patriot stockpiles for 4 days.
We're past WWII. Nobody has that capacity anymore. Some of the tech and factories built these gigantic battle cruisers are not present anymore even.
US may, and can pulverize Iran if they want, but it'll be much more expensive than WWII era, because of how interconnected the world is now, and this is how post-WWII world has been designated. Make everyone depend on everyone, and make war very expensive as a result.
Not just Amazon - I guess the Oil and gas industry is now run on the cloud.
They used to have big SGI machines 30 years ago... but I bet everything is on the cloud now using GPUs.
I tend to believe that they still have their own clusters. For speed and privacy reasons. You don't want to give away the location of the oil you have found.
I've been working on that for a client since yesterday (as a fractional CTO). Pretty hectic, basically nothing really works and we don't know yet if all data is lost or if anything is recoverable or when AWS UAE will become functional again so we can recover that region.
Finally, I have a very good argument for multi-region deployments ;))
that's my go to website atm: https://health.aws.amazon.com/health/status
What do you mean 'finally' - surely 'redundancy' or 'natural disaster' is reason enough.
To a lot of managers/startup execs this is something like "we won't ever need this". And I'd agree to some extent for not so important/rebuildable services. Depends on what you need. In startups, you don't have infinite time you can spend on stuff. But this makes a good case: if a geographical region only has one AWS region, don't keep data or run services that can't be easily rebuild somewhere else. In europe you can just pick two AWS regions and you stay in the same regions, UAE not so much.
I don't think this changes anything. It is always the same argument for me.
"How often do those happen?"
That was my point: now we have a very specific case we can argue. I always used the "what if a plane crashes into the data center" argument. Now I can say: in one of my engagements, we lost a datacenter completely because of a drone attack. That's a first for AWS as well, but we can draw from reality, not hypotheticals.
Severity: Disrupted
So if data won't be recoverable you all will mark it something like "Status: FUBAR" or some equivalent term?
FUBAR, I would vote for that
I wonder if ‘Apocalypse’ or ‘Molten Slag’ would be considered professional enough.
I'd accept "X_X" as status.
We didn't do multi-region deployments, but we did store database backups in a separate region just in case something really bad happened and our AWS region became unavailable. Also had a plan/some ready Terraform stuff in order to start setting up a deployment if it became apparent that the region wasn't coming back anytime soon.
IMO, if you're using AWS and not replicating your data somewhere else, this should be an eye-opener for you.
Not sure why everyone read this as me doing anything here, I'm a fractional CTO, which is kind of an advisor. Nothing invaluable will be lost tho. It's not the core platform, just a localized version for specific customers in the region.
You don't already have a DR plan in place?
Of course, no worries. Nothing irreplaceable will be lost ;) It was meant as a general example to be used in future arguments for everybody in tech leadership.
Any backups?
> Any backups?
Yup something has to be said too about good old offline backups on fat tapes.
Hmmm. We’ve seen the fun that comes from cutting data cables and pipelines. Think that’s been factored in with the asymmetric warfare coming from the Middle East? Perhaps some network assaults as well?
Krugman has pointed out that modern war is bloody expensive. Perhaps resistance will just be helping burn money? Lots of motivated people on one side. And I hope countries are being careful, as a Thirty Years War in the Middle East would suck.
Lesson learned: If your recovery plan requires calling any API in the dead region — to detach an IP, describe a route table, launch an instance, read an S3 object, or decrypt a volume — it will fail when you need it most.
Every dependency on the primary region is a dependency on the thing that just broke.
In the eighties my friends and I used to think we would be the first to go in a nuclear strike because we were close to an American air base. Now I have to worry about living close to an Amazon data centre.
Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47209781
Any chance this is causing the claude issues directly/indirectly?
I find it more likely that Anthropic has rented space in other data centers in the region that were also impacted by Iranian retaliation
Why would they funnel all their traffic to a middle eastern AZ?
Capacity is tight, you serve from where you can.
Probably also because most token use cases are not latency sensitive. A 200ms extra delay isn't going to change much for most use cases.
Right, so if they were able to get a discount in UAE…
Most people assume its because of the influx in chatgpt users switching to claude. 295% daily uninstall hike of ChatGPT: https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/02/chatgpt-uninstalls-surged-...
> U.S. Military Using Anthropic for Middle East Airstrikes[1]
> Strikes hit AWS datacenter
> Antropic aided strikes causes Anthropic outage lol
[1] https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-strikes-2026/card/u-s-...
This comment makes it seem as if it's the US who striked the Amazon data center.
The US lost 3 of its own fighter jets yesterday due to friendly fire[0], is it out of the realm of possibility?
[0] https://newrepublic.com/post/207197/us-shoots-three-fighter-...
US tax dollars blowing up US tax dollars. Lockheed Martin and Boeing stonks go up.
It wasn't the US attacking the UAE, just FYI.
More recent news: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-data-centers-middle-e...
> Two facilities in the United Arab Emirates sustained direct hits, while a third facility in Bahrain was damaged by a drone strike "in close proximity,"
Also to add context: AWS has contracts with the US military: "The Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract enables AWS to continue providing Department of Defense (DoD) customers with secure, reliable, and mission-critical cloud services." https://aws.amazon.com/federal/defense/jwcc/ Making them a target for retaliation ofc.
Amazon is an extremely visible American company, hitting their assets carries a symbolic meaning even if the DoD wouldn't have anything running on that datacentre at all. Iran's trying to transmit a message of "we can destroy your stuff too", trying to impact the general US feeling of invulnerability.
I don't think it'll work, but they might as well try I guess.
> I don't think it'll work, but they might as well try I guess.
Consider this from the eyes of the people living there. Your world is peaceful one day and burning tomorrow. It doesn't have to be "burning like hell", but something came from the sky, entered your building, exploded and damaged some stuff to the extent that fire-supression triggered and damaged more things.
Even if it's not a trauma, it's a shock. Something you'll be remembering for a long time. We live in fragile bubbles, but don't know it until we experience it pop. While this might not make them "win" the war, it'll leave a mark and make the affected persons' ears perch up to understand what's happening better.
Please note, I'm not from either side. I'm a close observer because of where I live, and still believe that this should have not happened.
Especially when 90% of the population are immigrants having no emotional ties to the ground
Yeah, it'll definitely trigger "why am I here and putting up with this" response in some people, and that's a breaking point for many of them.
> trying to impact the general US feeling of invulnerability
Or, perhaps, trying to defend themselves? They are being attacked, after all.
That's why they've been hitting residential buildings and hotels as well? They assume that because their proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah) hide in civilian structures, so does the US army?
All these attempts to justify Iranian terror demonstrate just how deep Qatari influence online has been. And even Qatar is being attacked by Iran now.
Is Hezbollah hiding in the elementary school that got bombed? Perhaps that’s where the Iranian nuclear research was done?
We attacked them. Full stop. And as far as I can tell we haven’t given them any conditions for when we will stop bombing them. In what moral framework do you have to just accept another sovereign, a vastly more powerful one, invading your country without fighting back?
I can't guess what the USA wants other than a distraction from the raping-of- children saga, but I bet Israel would settle for "we acknowledge your right to exist and won't fund or encourage organisations that plan to harm you."
If Saudi Arabia can get there…
The world has seen what Israel does when they’re attacked. They don’t get to set moral frameworks anymore.
Agreed. But that wasn't the OP's question.
The primary condition is giving up nuclear ambitions.
It is too late, Israel already has nuclear weapons.
> We attacked them
During negotiations, for the second time.
Negotiations during which the Iranians continuously stalled and continued their nuclear work. The threat of attack was part of the US negotiation strategy, and the Iranians thought they would call the "bluff". They were wrong.
I believe they have warned that any country offering support will be targeted, even before the attacks began.
So they are cowards if they do what they say, and they are cowards if they don't do anything.
What should they do? Evacuate the country and offer the land for free?
> They assume that because their proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah) hide in civilian structures, so does the US army?
> Two US Defense Department employees were wounded when an Iranian drone struck a hotel in Bahrain's capital Manama, The Washington Post reported Monday.
I genuinetely do not think Hasbara like this works anymore. The overton window on this has irrevocably shifted since 2023 and it would be a better strategy for you to live within this new reality, rather than making ludicrous claims that the middle eastern country most vehemently trying to shape western views on the region is... Qatar. It just comes across as an obvious projection, and only encourages sentiment that has a real potential to become harmful to you personally.
That is, unless posts like thos are designed to encourage that sentiment, which I sometimes suspect.
I think this shifted overtone window has partially to do with why they started this war to begin with, they see the writing on the wall and their window of opportunity is closing. Trump is at historic lows in polling [1]; 65% of democrats now sympathize more with Palestinians over Israelis (17%) [2]. HN is just a generally reactionary place, I wouldn't read to much into that.
[1] https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-sil...
[2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/702440/israelis-no-longer-ahead...
The more telling figure is that 50% of *republicans* under 50 do not support Israel. Even Charlie Kirk was posting about how awful an idea an Iran war was before he was killed in mysterious circumstances.
The Epstein files with their derogatory and supremacist remarks made about "goyim" have not helped. Neither has the PR dwmage control to either ignore that or claim he was working for Russia or Qatar.
The times they are a changin'.
> All these attempts to justify Iranian terror
At the end of the day you have to understand the reality that Iran is a sovereign nation that is going to defend itself. And yes they are hitting residential buildings and hotels with US military personnel present. None of this is terrorism, this is a nation state retaliating after an attack on their nation, you have to understand this basic concept, actions have consequences.
This is not propaganda, you are just willfully ignorant. If you want to destroy Iran you have to take retaliation into account, everything else is just propaganda, what do you expect them to do instead? Just lie down and take it?
You can't use retaliation of the nation you attacked as justification of why the attack was justified, its circular logic, this is textbook propaganda you are repeating.
I mean if you want to put your geopolitical blinkers on, sure...but how to beat America is old news at this point: cause casualties however you can, and wait for the US to give up.
Complain about it all you want but what are you going to do? The US is already bombing them.
Perhaps all of this goes into the big bucket labelled "war is expensive and unpredictable, maybe try diplomacy?"
Which the current administration has made a note of promptly tearing up prior agreements with everyone anyway so...whoops I guess.
It's both, this particular counter-attack is aimed at morale rather than specifically a base launching sorties against them.
Ultimately, this war ends when America loses the political will to continue, so morale is a strategic objective for them.
they have been engaging in hybrid warfare for decade+ they don't get to play victim this is the result of their continued proxy attacks
America is so unused to being attacked (counter-attacked) that this needs to be explained apparently.
Defend themselves? LOL... Keep dreaming. Maybe they are continuing being delusional they can threaten a superpower without repercussions... I suggest getting a shrink working on that...
They can make it very expensive though. And they can't negotiate, given it's the second time they are attacked during negotiations, so really, what can they do? Cause the most chaos possible around them, strain the relationships between the US and other ME countries, force the US to make a choice about which ally to protect (it will be Saudi Arabia), make the oil price go up and deplete US weapon stocks. If the force the US and Israel to put boots on the ground, they will have won.
In WW-II, the US bombed the hell out of German forces for months on end. That is what people do not understand. The US have the capability to generate bombs indefinitely. There will be no boots on the ground for soldiers (they wish). They will just get pulverised as time goes by. If the US and Israel will think they cannot get to their thick skull they'll simply bomb the oil refineries and let the Iranian regime deal with paychecks from their street goons and fanatics who will eat them alive.
Its not bombs that are running out, its interceptors. The 12 day war exhausted 25% of american stocks, we're on day 3 of this round, do the math.
What happens to Israel when the interceptors run out and they're on equal standing with Iranian/Palestinian/Lebanese civilians?
> The US have the capability to generate bombs indefinitely.
The same US which had to re-build and re-open factories to be able to support Ukraine, and had an important shortage of shells for some time?
The same US talking with their allies to build ships for them?
US generals said that their defensive munition is not infinite. Middle Eastern countries said that they have Patriot stockpiles for 4 days.
We're past WWII. Nobody has that capacity anymore. Some of the tech and factories built these gigantic battle cruisers are not present anymore even.
US may, and can pulverize Iran if they want, but it'll be much more expensive than WWII era, because of how interconnected the world is now, and this is how post-WWII world has been designated. Make everyone depend on everyone, and make war very expensive as a result.
Not just Amazon - I guess the Oil and gas industry is now run on the cloud. They used to have big SGI machines 30 years ago... but I bet everything is on the cloud now using GPUs.
I tend to believe that they still have their own clusters. For speed and privacy reasons. You don't want to give away the location of the oil you have found.
us govt and big business have always worked hand in hand, they compliment each other.
They complement each other too, which is more impactul than any compliments they might send.